


Fool Me Once And A Half

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 16:25:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15867348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: The first time they met Madara's world lit up with color - but Tobirama's didn't. Born blind, Tobirama would never get to experience color. And after all these years he still doesn't believe in Madara's claims that the two of them are soulmates.





	Fool Me Once And A Half

The only reason Madara had deigned to leave the warmth and comfort of his uptown apartment was the slight panic in Hashirama’s voice when the man called. Excitable he might be but Hashirama wasn’t usually prone to genuine panic over small unimportant things. _Usually_. Madara would judge for himself how legitimate the situation was when he got there.

Slogging through fifteen minutes worth of snow so early in the morning was not how he wanted to spend the first day of his weekend, especially not with his car in the shop, so Madara was already scowling dark enough to scare a thundercloud by the time he punched the buzzer in the front foyer of Hashirama’s apartment building. Rubbing his hands together inside their woolen mittens, he breathed in between them and prayed that the feeling would return to his fingers soon.

 _Who is it?_ Hashirama’s voice was made tinny but the intercom. Madara snorted and pressed the button.

“Me, you idiot.”

_Why didn’t you just use your key?_

“I forgot it; just let me in! It’s freezing!”

A moment of silence passed and then the door behind him buzzed and Madara lunged for it, throwing himself in to the warmth of the building’s interior. Cheap red and green Christmas decorations winked at him from every corner of the front room, giving him pause as he stopped to take in the colors he’d spent many years unable to enjoy, but it was only for a brief moment. He quickly shook his head to clear away the thoughts trying to press in on him and made his way over to the elevators, thanking the fates that there was already one waiting on the ground floor.

While the elevator saved him the trouble of hauling himself up several flights of stairs, he slipped his gloves off and shoved them in to his coat pockets so he could breathe directly on to the skin of his hands. By the time a small ding prompted him to step out in to the proper hallway he was shaking out the tingling sensation of receding numbness.

Hashirama appeared to have thought ahead for once as the door had been propped open for him. Madara slipped inside, kicked away the wooden block stopping the door from latching, and looked around with a pinched expression.

“Alright,” he called in to the suspiciously quiet and dark interior. “What’s this emergency that you think I, of all people, will be able to help you with? If it’s not important then I’m making you pay for a cab back home.”

“Oh! You’re here!” Hashirama’s head popped out from one of the rooms on the other side of the lounge area and Madara immediately noticed two things wrong. Firstly that his normally loud, boisterous voice was reduced to a sort of whispery yell. Secondly that he seemed to be in the wrong bedroom.

“Why are you creeping around your brother’s room?”

Instead of answering, Hashirama frantically waved him closer and disappeared out of sight. Madara hesitated. Sure, he’d fantasized about being allowed in to Tobirama’s room hundreds of times over the last few years for various reasons, only about half of them sexy, but it was usually the younger man himself that he pictured inviting him in, not Hashirama. With a deep sigh he moved to follow where he had been bidden. If there was indeed some kind of trouble in there then maybe he could earn some brownie points by offering help.

He’d been working to earn Tobirama’s good favor for years now with no success but it never hurt to keep trying.

Peeking his head around the doorframe, Madara was met by a dark room with the shades pulled down and only a portable lamp on the desk illuminating the shape of Hashirama hovering over the bed. Squinting in to the darkness revealed nothing that seemed imminently dangerous so he stopped in the entrance and folded his arms to give his friend an expectant look.

“Well?”

“He’s really sick.” The lamp just barely lit up Hashirama’s pout. “And he won’t take his medicine.”

“ _That’s_ what you called me here for?”

“Of course! He won’t listen to me so I thought he might listen to you except now he’s fallen asleep so I thought–!”

“You are not sticking a needle in my ass while I sleep,” Tobirama’s voice interrupted him from one corner of the room, heavy with exhaustion and the dry rasp of someone who desperately needed a drink of water.

Madara blinked at the shapeless lump on the bed in surprise and then swung his eyes back over to Hashirama. For the first time he realized that the man was indeed holding a syringe carefully in one hand, something his gaze had passed right over because the man was a _doctor_ , it wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. Now he frowned in confusion.

“You were going to stick his butt in his sleep? That’s real creepy, Hashbrown. Real creepy.”

“Stop calling me Hashbrown,” his friend whined while the lump in the bed snickered mercilessly. “He needs his medicine and he _knows_ it needs to be delivered in to a large muscle group but he won’t let me!”

“And how the hell do you think I’m supposed to help with this?”

Hashirama stumbled towards him with the plunger of the syringe held out like a gift. “I thought you might be able to convince him to take his medicine. You know, ‘cause you’re his sou–”

Before he could finish that word Madara clapped a hand over the man’s mouth and gave the best death glare he could, hoping the light of the lamp was enough for his point to get across. Just in case it wasn’t he pulled Hashirama closer and whispered a few death threats in his ear if he didn’t shut the hell up. Only after his victim had gone limp with surrender did Madara let go and look around.

“Why are the lights off in here? Trying to give people needles in the dark seems like a bad idea.”

“Tobi was sleeping!”

“Brother, I am _blind_ ,” Tobirama’s voice pointed out, a little less sleepy than before as the commotion dragged him farther in to consciousness.

While Hashirama spluttered over how he could have been so stupid – honestly, it was a question many people asked with alarming frequency for such a ‘noble’ profession – Madara reached over to hit the light switch. Then he immediately wanted to turn it back off so he could deny ever having seen something as adorable as a sick Tobirama all bundled up in blankets with his hair in disarray and his cheeks flushed with fever. Knowing he was sick did nothing to detract from how cute he looked, although Madara admitted he might have had a slight bias.

To distract himself he let his eyes rove around the room, taking in all the details he possibly could; it was unlikely he would be allowed back in here any time soon. Soft green paint colored the walls, probably not Tobirama’s decision, and the room had a very simple layout with minimal furniture to clutter the floor space. A squat desk sat next to a tall bookshelf holding what looked like Tobirama’s massive collection of audiobooks, all of them labeled with strips of braille. On the other side of the room an open closet held a meticulously organized selection of clothing, underneath which sat a neat row of shoes. Madara smiled and wondered if Tobirama’s neat freak tendencies would have shown up so prominently even if he hadn’t been born without sight.

Actually he wondered a lot about how things might have been different if Tobirama had not been born blind, although he wouldn’t change the man for the world.

“Will the two of you go away? I am trying to sleep.” Dragging the blankets over his head, the poor man grumbled from underneath them about overbearing brothers and annoying idiots who wouldn’t go away. Madara wondered if the second was aimed at him. He hadn’t even done anything but respond to a panic call! Then he flinched when Hashirama looked over at him with pleading eyes.

“You’ll help, won’t you? He could get worse if he doesn’t get the medicine and you know how sickly he’s always been!” Ignoring the offended _Hey!_ Tobirama grumbled, Hashirama stepped forward to latch on to Madara’s arm and whine plaintively, “I don’t want my baby brother to die!”

“Oh relax, he isn’t going to die,” Madara snapped.

“So you will help!”

“Will you shut up?”

Hashirama beamed at him and gently pressed the syringe in to his hands. After helping this idiot through so many years of med school Madara was hardly a stranger to handling such things but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with it. Unfortunately his friend didn’t stick around to hear any protests. Hashirama was bouncing out of the room with a cheerful smile and a happy announcement that he would make breakfast before Madara could do more than try to hand the stupid needle back.

Suddenly he found himself alone in a room with Tobirama, in the man’s bedroom no less, at a loss for what to say. He knew very well that he should leave. Most likely Tobirama was silently counting the seconds until he did so, eager to get rid of him, but he couldn’t seem to make his feet move.

“What did you stop him from saying?”

“Huh?” The unexpected voice made him jump, only just realizing that he had been staring at the nothing in complete silence for probably several minutes.

“Before, you stopped Anija from saying something. What was it?”

Madara swallowed thickly and did a bit of rapid mental math, weighing how badly he wanted to have this conversation with how willing he was to listen to the yelling that just opening the subject was likely to earn him. For all the times he’d tried to get them to talk about it, he’d never made it passed a few opening sentences before being violently shut down. He’d given up on the whole endeavor years ago and resigned himself to yearning from afar.

Sighing in deference to the inevitable, he shook his head and said quietly, “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“No, I want to know. My hearing is very good. I heard you threatening him if he didn’t shut his gob. That seems like it must have been very important and I don’t like it when people keep secrets from me.” Tobirama sat up in bed and turned his head towards where he could hear Madara’s voice, blank red eyes staring somewhere off to one side.

“Look, its fine. It isn’t really a secret. You just won’t want to talk about it.”

“If it isn’t a secret then you shouldn’t have any problem telling me.”

“Just drop it, alright?” Madara scowled and tightened his empty hand in to a fist but he was met with a matching scowl from the man across the room.

Turning his body more fully towards the door, Tobirama straightened as far as the obvious exhaustion weighing him down would allow. “Would you quit being difficult for once in your life? It was a simple question and it should be a simple answer.”

“It is but–”

“Then tell me!”

“You don’t want to hear it, trust me.”

“I do!”

“No, you don’t.”

“Just fucking tell me what you didn’t want him to say!”

Madara could almost hear the sound of his temper snapping, like brittle wood that cracked down the center and left splinters to dig under the skin.

“Because you’re my soulmate! There! That’s what I stopped him from saying! He thought you might listen to me because we’re soulmates but I didn’t think you wanted to hear that. Happy now?” He very nearly crossed his arms with temper until he remembered at the last second that he was holding something sharp and full of unknown medication. Moments like that made him glad that Tobirama couldn’t see his awkward flailing.

A deadly silence hung between the two of them for nearly half a minute before finally Tobirama said, “You’re still on about that, huh?” Madara had thought his heart inured against any blow this man could possibly hit him with but the callous, uncaring tone those words had been spoken in made him shiver and fall back a step.

“You don’t have to believe me,” he ground out stiffly from between clenched teeth. “It remains the truth whether you believe it or not.”

“I don’t get why you’re pushing it so hard. It’s been years. The joke can stop.”

“Joke?” Madara blinked, completely flabbergasted, but Tobirama only sneered in his general direction.

“Clearly. Look, I get it. Ha ha, tell the blind man that you see color and make him think you’re his soulmate. What a fucking laugh. But I am not a child, I will not fall for the same stupid prank twice, so you can take your fake little sob story and get out of my room! For that matter, get out of my life!” Tobirama panted raggedly in the aftermath of his outburst, hands fisted in the blanket covering his lap.

It took four different tries opening his mouth and closing it again before finally Madara was able to say, “You think I’m making fun of you. I didn’t…I never knew that was why you…I thought you just hated the idea of it being me.”

“Don’t try to make the sob story worse, Uchiha, Just go.” Tobirama huffed and Madara narrowed his eyes at the man, his irritation rising back up again.

“You won’t even consider that I might be telling the truth?” he demanded. “If it was all just a cruel joke, why would I have let it carry on this long when clearly you’ve never believed me for a single moment?”

“What would you have me do? Develop new eyes so I can see for myself?”

“There _is_ a way to test this, you know.”

For a half a second Madara thought Tobirama might leap up off the bed and punch him because they both knew exactly what he was suggesting and clearly it wasn’t an option the younger man favored. Although, that was actually rather understandable. He very obviously hated Madara down to the core so kissing him to test whether or not they were really soulmates when he was already sure they weren’t probably didn’t sound like a great time.

He very nearly swallowed his own tongue in surprise when Tobirama nodded jerkily in acceptance.

“Alright, fine. Once. Just to prove it one way or another.”

“Right. Yeah. Just once, got it.”

“Get over here then.”

Madara very nearly leapt across the room. Even if this didn’t stop Tobirama from despising the idea, it would at least prove to him that it wasn’t all a big joke. Accepting the truth of the matter was something he could build on, given enough time, so he would take what he could get.

“You’re not, like, contagious or anything, right?” he asked, hesitating at the last second. Tobirama sneered.

“No. You’re _safe_ from my icky germs.”

“Right. Good. How do you…want to do this?” Clearing his throat, Madara’s eyes darted from side to side even though the other man couldn’t even see him blushing. “Do you want me to, uh…”

“Just get down here!”

Impatient, Tobirama reached out towards the sound of his voice and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him down to feel around for his face so they wouldn’t head-butt each other.  Madara remained still and very carefully did not shiver when the pad of one finger brushed over his lips. He watched the irritation on Tobirama’s face bleed slowly in to reluctant curiosity and sparks of electricity were already dancing along his spine by the time he felt another tug of his shirt bringing him that last remaining inch down.

When their lips met it was everything the movies promised it would be; it was every cliché sentence in all the terrible romance books and the historic legends, all the grand tales in bedtime stories. Fireworks went off, the earth shifted, gravity failed, and Madara could hardly tell if he were falling forward or backward but it didn’t matter because it was perfect. Tobirama was perfect.

It ended too soon. His companion pulled away with a ragged gasp that dragged a protesting keen from his throat before he could stop it, darkening the flush already heating his cheeks. He was at least pleased to note that Tobirama was panting as well and that all anger was gone from his expression. In its place was a strange mixture of awe and consternation, the look of a man who just realized that he had been proved wrong after holding firm to his opinions for years. Even as he struggled to remember how breathing was supposed to work, Madara managed to take a moment and revel in that expression, his moment of triumph after waiting for so long.

At last Tobirama seemed to gather himself enough to let go of the shirt his fingers were still fisted in, absently patting the material smooth like he had forgotten whose chest lay underneath. Madara straightened but did not move away while he waited for the other man to say something – _anything_.

“Clearly I…owe you some sort of an apology,” Tobirama said finally. Where normally Madara would have expected to feel anger, all he felt was a sort of saddened curiosity. 

“You said that you didn’t want to fall for the same prank ‘again’. What did you mean?”

Tobirama sighed, his shoulders folding inwards, and for a moment Madara almost regretted even asking. But he had been fighting for this man to at least recognize the fact that they were soulmates for years now and it felt important to know exactly what it was that had kept them apart this long. The very moment they met Madara’s world had lit up with color for the first time. If only Tobirama would let him, he would spend the rest of his life trying to find the words to describe those colors for the one who could not see them.

“When I was fourteen a new family moved in down the street with a boy about my age. I didn’t know then but they had moved to seek help for the kid, psychological help. He’d found his soulmate and lost her in the same year and it sort of…broke something inside him. He’d begun preying on other kids, convincing them that he was their soulmate and that they must just be colorblind, probably in some desperate attempt to connect with someone again.”

“Fuck.” Madara pulled a hand through his hair, already able to see where this was going.

“Yeah, fuck,” Tobirama agreed ruefully. “As you can imagine, I was rather easy prey for him. I had no reason not to believe him when he said he saw colors for me and I was thrilled at first. Then the more I got to know him the more I realized how cruelly he treated me until one day I went to visit and found a young girl there who also claimed to be his soulmate and the truth came out that it was neither of us.”

“How come Hashirama never mentioned this?”

“At the time he was away at summer camp. I asked our parents not to mention it because I was already in pain and I didn’t want to deal with his dramatics making me feel worse about it.” Tobirama shrugged.

Now with both hands tangled up and tugging on his thick locks, Madara closed his eyes for a moment. It made sense to him now why Tobirama would have pushed back against him so hard. He wasn’t sure he would have been able to deal with even one false soulmate, let alone the possibility that a second person might be trying to same gag. As much as he kind of wanted to still be angry at being denied for so long, he just couldn’t find it within himself when faced with the latent pain he could see on the other man’s face. Self-preservation was a concept he understood only too well.  

One thing he did not see on Tobirama’s face was any sort of joy. Knowing that they were truly soulmates clearly wasn’t the happy ending he had been waiting for as it was for Madara. Spinning the syringe still dangling loosely from the fingertips of one hand, Madara sighed. Changing the subject seemed the safest route to take.

“Will you take the medicine? I’ll leave you alone to…think about this or…ignore it. Whatever you want.”

“Fine,” Tobirama breathed faintly.

“Does it really have to go in–?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Better you than my brother though.” Pushing the blankets off of himself, Tobirama squirmed around until he was on his belly with a thumb hooked in to the waist band of his pajama and pulling them down to expose a large swath of one pale butt cheek.

Madara warred against the urge to pause and admire as he knelt down, making sure that his movements were as loud as possible, and inserted the needle with as little skin contact as he could manage. They both flinched as Tobirama hissed in pain but Madara kept a steady pressure on the plunger until the entire dose had been delivered. When he stood he reached for the alcohol swabs and bandages which had been prepared and left waiting on the corner of the desk.

“That’s probably not how you pictured seeing my ass for the first time,” Tobirama muttered after he was allowed to pull his pants back up. Madara spluttered and it made the other crack a smile at last. Just a small one but it was a start, at least.

“Ahem! Uh, well, I’ll leave you to rest. And I’ll tell Hashirama not to bother you.” Even as he spoke he was turning away, wrapping the syringe in some spare gauze until it could be properly disposed of.

“I am sorry, you know.”

Pausing with his hand on the doorknob, Madara looked back to see Tobirama pushing his blankets away a little more so that he could turn sideways a bit. Ignoring the way his hands were shaking, he took a deep breath and let it back out slowly before allowing himself to answer. For all the things he wanted to say, however, all he could come up with was, “Its fine.”

“Just – oh fuck it.” Swinging his legs out, Tobirama struggled to stand on shaky knees.

“Don’t get up! You’re sick; you’re supposed to be resting! What are you doing?”

The idiot was shivering as he emerged from his warm bed in to the cold winter air but stubbornly stumbled over anyway, pattering across the empty center of his room until Madara met him halfway, dropping the syringe on the desk so he could try and steer Tobirama back towards the blankets.

Exasperated, he grumbled, “I get it, alright? Get back in bed. You’re not even properly dressed to be up and about! Why didn’t your brother get you a sweater?”

“Quit being a mother hen for two seconds and just listen, damn it!”

“But you could get even more sick! I don’t even know what you have!”

“Ugh.”

Taking two fistfuls of his shirt again, Tobirama dragged him in until their mouths met for a second time, effectively cutting off any words which Madara might have been trying to say. In fact, his mind was suddenly emptied of words altogether. The only thing he could think of was Tobirama as he groaned in surprise, stepping closer on instinct to settle his hands on sharp hipbones. He cared little for the fact that the kiss tasted like chicken soup and some kind of cough syrup. What mattered was the bone deep feeling of relief for finally being together even if his brain managed to catch up to him eventually and remind him that he wasn’t really sure what was actually going on here.

When the other made to pull away from him this time Madara held tighter, tilting his chin up to deepen the kiss, desperate for just a moment longer. He was incredibly startled not to get shoved away for such a bold move. Instead the hands in his shirt tightened and Madara earned himself those precious few more seconds he so desired before a gentle nip told him it was time to back away.

He did – reluctantly – and was rewarded by the sight of cheeks flushed with something more than fever. Tobirama had never been more beautiful to him than he was now, up close and sheepish but for the first time without a single trace of displeasure for Madara’s presence. 

“I was angry because I thought you were lying,” Tobirama said quietly. “And then as time went on I realized that no matter how angry I was I still felt pulled towards you in some way. Developing a crush on the person I thought was only trying to hurt me just made me feel stupid and it felt like you were winning. Like you were taking a part of me that shouldn’t belong to you. I don’t…hate this. I think I’m just going to need a while to adjust.”

“Adjust,” Madara echoed for lack of any ability to respond coherently. That wasn’t actually what his brain was caught on but Tobirama could hardly see his expression, responding only to the stunned tone in his voice.

“I’ve been angry at you for so long that it’s kind of an engrained habit. Now I know that I was wrong so I just need to rearrange my thinking a bit.”

“Oh.”

“Look, I know it’s not the overjoyed reaction you were probably hoping for but–”

Madara blurted out the words as soon as they caught up to him, cutting the other off. “You like me!?”

“Of course that is what you would fixate on.” Tobirama shook his head but he was almost smiling again. “How typical. I should have known that would distract you. Yes I have, ah, some form of feelings for you. They’re complicated and I’ll need to sort them out but yes.”

Restraining himself from crowing with victory took more effort than it probably should have but Madara wasn’t nearly as dumb as many people assumed him to be; he knew a hard hint when he saw one and he recognized that now was definitely not the time to press this. Still, he didn’t bother stopping himself from grinning like a maniac. Even just this small bit of progress was more than he had dared to hope for in quite some time now.

“You can have all the time you want,” he said. “But for now you should get back in bed. Sick people need sleep and you look ready to pass out just from standing up for five minutes.”

“Bully.”

“Sometimes, yes.”

At last Tobirama allowed himself to be led back to the bed, slipping under the covers and rolling over the face the wall. Madara hovered for a few seconds just to smile down at him and relive the kisses they had shared in his head. Then he retrieved the needle, shut off the light, and left the poor man to his rest.

Hashirama was fluttering around the small kitchenette on the other side of the apartment’s main area when he stepped out of the bedroom, closing the door behind himself with a gentle click. Several plates were already sitting on the dining table, each of them heaped with different kinds of food, yet still the other man was trying to scramble more eggs and slice up a few more apples at the same time. Madara wrinkled his nose in confusion as he made his way over.

“Were you planning on feeding an army?” he demanded. Hashirama spun around with one hand pressed to his chest in shock.

“Did he take his medicine!?”

“He’s fine. Yes, he took his medicine. What are you doing with this much food?”

“Stress cooking! I didn’t know if things were going okay in there or if he wasn’t taking his medicine still and I was worried! So I cooked. Though, I may have gone slightly overboard…”

Madara sighed tiredly. “Only slightly?”

In truth he wasn’t all that annoyed. He would have been worried too in Hashirama’s position and his habits for dealing with stress were much more destructive than overenthusiastic breakfast preparations. Rather than spout a long and involved lecture which he knew his friend would only half pay attention to and retain none of, Madara grabbed a plate and sat down in the closest chair, sliding his medical waste on to the lid of the garbage can.

“Deal with that,” he demanded shortly then began piling up all his favorite foods.

“How are you guys?” Hashirama grabbed a plate of his own and sat down on the opposite side of the table, over-acting in his effort to be nonchalant. “I was surprised when I didn’t hear any screaming.”

“We’re…making headway.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything!” Hashirama pouted and Madara threw a slice of apple at him.

Sticking out his tongue he said, “It wasn’t supposed to tell you anything; it’s none of your business!”

As his friend pouted and whined, Madara turned to look over his shoulder at the closed bedroom door, let his eyes linger on the solid blue color and the flecks of white where the paint had been chipped away. The first color he had ever seen – besides the red of Tobirama’s eyes, of course – had been the pale blue of the sky above him after his soulmate knocked him on his back for excitedly announcing the connection between them. At the time he hadn’t understood why such a happy occasion should been met with such anger.

Now that he had his answers he knew very well that still more patience would be needed before they could be anything close to what he hoped they might become but, surprisingly, he was alright with that.

“We’ll be fine,” he murmured absently. And for the first time since they met, he truly believed that.  


End file.
